Who: Micah and Clare What: Roomates - Drunk and sober Where: Red Rock Villas When: Night after the trouble at the hotel Warnings/Rating: Drunkenness, sadness, some blood at the beginning
The messages from Micah on the journal hadn’t been very reassuring at all, and her trip into the bathroom caused her to gasp and nearly throw up before she got her stomach under control. There had been quite a bit of blood in there, handprints on surfaces that brought back memories (not necessarily her own) of blood spreading across floors and seeping under fingers. She stared at the red stains on the white tile for a long time before shaking herself out of the shock and heading for the cabinet under the kitchen sink. She knew what Micah had said, but she couldn’t leave the stains there to haunt her until he came back. Starting on one side of the small room, she scrubbed her way across floor and walls until the tile sparkled clean again.
It took longer than she’d thought, but it helped give her something to think about other than the worry that had set in the moment she replied to Micah. By the time she was done with the cleaning, her hands were wrinkled and smelled of chlorinated bleachy pools, much better than the copper tang that had been lingering in the bathroom. Tired from the work, she curled up on the couch in the living room and waited.
It was past four in the morning by the time Micah hauled himself home, and it was not done in any manner that could be considered ‘quiet’. He dropped his keys twice before he managed to get the door unlocked, and when he came in, it was on a pair of crutches tucked beneath his arms, his left leg still heavily bandaged from the knee down, and while the pain, the injuries had mostly been forgotten at the hotel, they were screaming to bring attention to themselves now. One crutch clattered to the floor just inside the room as he pushed the door closed, dropping his keys on a table near the door before attempting to do anything else. He reeked of blood and whiskey, his face reddened, one hand bruised and bloodied from punching the wall. And when he turned on the lights in the living room and saw Clare curled up there, Micah grew still where he stood. “Fuck,” he said softly, immediately regretting making such a ruckus, even through his drink-addled brain.
The keys outside the door had woken her even before they made their way into the lock, and by the time Micah pushed in the door, Clare was awake, if still curled up on the couch. She was up before the door was shut, sighing at him and shaking her head. He looked awful. Crossing the room, she winced at the smell that was coming off of him, but didn’t let it stop her. “How hurt are you?” she asked, looking closely at his face and trying to see how she could help. It wasn’t something she would’ve done even a month ago, but things had been changing for her lately. “...come on...” She picked up the crutch and held it near his side.
Some of the guilt was alleviated when he saw that she wasn’t sleeping, but it hardly helped matters when she ventured close, leaving him to lean back, suddenly ashamed of what he was doing, how he had behaved that night. “No worse than I was with the ice and that... thing... the other night,” Micah said, averting his eyes from her as she offered him his fallen crutch. It was tucked beneath one arm and lifted his eyes to her for a moment before glancing down once more. A ragged breath escaped him before Micah gave a swift shake of his head, turning away from her and back towards the door. “I should just go. You don’t need this. I’ll come back when I’m sober. When I’ve had a chance to think.” As if thinking would do him any good at this point.
“Stop...” she started, voice gentle and hand tentative but somehow also firm on his arm. “You’re in no shape to go anywhere.” She tried to offer him a smile when he looked up at her, but by the time it spread across her face he was already looking away again. Out of practice she may have been, but she’d been on drunk duty for her friends more than once in college, and she could do the same sort of thing for Micah. Or at least as much as she could. “Even if you’re not hurt, you shouldn’t be out like this.” The entire time she was talking, she was turning him, careful but insistent, pointing him back in the direction of the apartment and away from the door.
There was only so much energy he could put into resisting, and Clare was stronger than what he had left in himself. His progress was slow, made even slower by how unsteady he was. No words were offered until he was at the door to his bedroom, turning to rest his back against the doorframe and finally give Clare more than a passing look. “If you knew what I did, Clare,” Micah started, his voice soft, his accent thick, “you would kick me out of this place in a heartbeat. I’m- I’m a bad person. I really am.” There was something strangely vulnerable about him right then, his hair damp around his hairline, sticking to his face, eyes bloodshot and cheeks ruddy.
She sighed at how slowly and unsteadily he was moving, but kept a hand near his elbow as they crossed the apartment. “Shh, we’ll talk about it in the morning, okay?” She didn’t know what the hotel had done to him, but she did know that nothing of sense would be said while he was still drunk. The look in his eyes broke her heart a little; he’d started to become a friend in the short time since they’d been sharing the apartment, and to see him like this was hard. She reached out and patted his arm, awkward but careful, and tried to give him another smile. “Tonight you just need to try to sleep.”
Clare made it all sound so simple, so easy and quaint, and Micah wanted to believe her, to draw some strength and assurance from her words, but all the guilt that plagued him, heavy and suffocating, didn’t allow him to do so. He managed a vague nod of his head to serve as a response, reaching out to cover her hand with his own, trembling like a leaf. “You wouldn’t get me that bottle of whiskey from the cabinet, would you?” he asked, only faintly joking with his words. “To help me sleep, I mean.” Because a drunken stupor would suit him better right then rather than the sobering meeting with Clare here in the apartment they shared. Just the two of them, because Noah was gone, and that was just another thing he didn’t want to think about, to deal with, on top of everything else. His chest was tight with pain and guilt and he just wanted to sleep and never wake up again.
When his hand laid over hers, she just sighed and shook her head. “No. Not tonight, Micah. The bottle will keep. I think you’ll be able to sleep once you lay down. Come on...” Another nudge as she tried to lead him across his room, blushing slightly at being in his room, but trying to ignore it. She squeezed his arm gently, trying to be as comforting as possible, since she knew that something had happened that was bad enough to shake him badly.
To his credit, Micah didn’t push the subject of the drink any further, instead letting Clare lead him into his own room. It was decorated sparsely, but the bed was large, messed with a plethora of blankets and pillows. As soon as he was in reach of the mattress, he let the crutches topple to the floor with a clatter, turning and dropping down onto the mattress bonelessly. One leg hung over the edge of the mattress, an arm thrown over his eyes, and for the moment, he was still, quiet. “I’m sorry,” he said softly, and whether it was to Clare or to whomever he had been with at the hotel, it was impossible to know.
“Shh,” she shushed his apology while picking up the crutches, leaning them against the wall near the bed. She also moved a trash can nearby and sighed as she pulled off his shoes. That done, she rested her hand for a moment against his shoulder and then let herself out of his room, closing the door mostly behind herself. She crawled into her own bed then, glad that she didn’t have to work in the morning, only several hours away.